Hipstamatic 260 released with a bunch of new features!

Several days ago, we found out that iOS 6 and the iPhone 5 broke Hipstamatic. A new update was promised soon. The Hipstamatic 260 update was released today — soon, as promised. It’s more than just a bug fix update. The 260 comes with several cool new features in addition to “Bug fixes and performance improvements”, including the new Rock The Vote FreePak.

Most importantly (and not specifically mentioned in the App Store description), the bug introduced with Hipstamatic on the iPhone 5 has been fixed. Hipstamatic once again saves images up to 2448×2448 pixels.

The 260 update is now iPhone 5 optimized. The revised user interface fills the larger screen of the 5 quite nicely. Not in the App Store description, but the new UI also has a slightly larger and more square viewfinder. Hipstamatic has never been about precise onscreen framing, but the new, larger viewfinder should offer a tiny improvement while still maintaining the point-and-shoot spirit of the app.

The flash button has been improved as well and works more intuitively. The neutral position is now centered. A jog to the left arms the app’s software flash. A jog to the right arms the iPhone’s hardware flash (on equipped devices).

Hipstamatic 260 comes with a new “Rock The Vote” FreePak, which I strongly suspect will only be available for a limited time. The pak comes with two new films and a new case. The RTV Film adds boldness and saturation along with a hand-drawn style frame. The RTV Shout! Film adds callouts to the print, such as “We will be counted” and “We will vote”. The callouts are randomized. RTV Shout is a novelty film that may find its way out of mothballs every couple of years or so. The bold look of RTV isn’t outstanding, but the frame is an interesting addition to the Hipstamatic camera bag.

Hipstamtic 260 comes with a new Multiple Exposure kit for $0.99 in-app purchase. It adds a new slider to the back of the Hipstamatic case and enables you to layer two exposures in Hipstamatic. The feature is easy to use. You can re-enable the slider to add even more exposures.

Prints and Stacks view has been revamped with support for portrait as well as landscape orientations (requires iOS 6).

One other undocumented addition…. Hipstamatic 260 requires iOS 5.0 or newer and no longer supports iOS 4.x or older.

A lot of us would have been happy with a Hipstamatic update that simply fixed the iPhone 5 issues. Instead, they released what I consider to be a good update with plenty of new, well-done features.

If you just got a new iPhone 5 from another brand of smartphone, I highly recommend Hipstamatic. It’s got a unique set of effects that no other app has matched. It also has great Instagram integration.

Marty is a self-employed graphic designer in the Fort Worth/Dallas Metroplex. He is an avid Rangers baseball, Chicago Cubs, Packers and Highbury Arsenal fan. In addition to capturing random moments with whatever camera is close by (usually his iPhone), his other interests include coffee, film, music, and traveling in seats 5E and 5F with his fiancé.

how do i set the prints and stacks view in landscape? I don't like the portrait format.

zerozero31

I'd be happy with a way to stop the app from flipping around when I least expect it (and yes, I know I can set the 'rotate lock' thingie in the iPhone settings, but that's a global setting, not an app-specific setting).

Ow, and STOP showing me those bloody tool tips!

Chris

I've got a question that I've not been able to find an answer to anywhere. I'm an American living in the UK and would love to download the RTV Freepack but whenever I try, it says, "Product no longer available". Do you know whether it's only available in the US or if it's some other known issue?

jovike

I got it! UK account in UK.

http://twitter.com/lalaithbr @lalaithbr

I downloaded it and I am in Brazil…

jovike

I see what you mean about the tool tips.

By the way, I once found Hipstamatic was using 2GB! View space usage with Settings/General/Usage.

I deleted all the photos and reinstalled. With all lenses etc. downloaded by the app using Restore Purchases, with no photos, it should be using about 270 MB. (Back-up any photos you want to keep before doing this.)

http://twitter.com/lalaithbr @lalaithbr

You're right. I've done this before too. It opened so much is space in my i4 16gb… The next one that I will buy will have many more memory than this. 16gb is nothing with so many apps that use so much space! Some games, for example, they're impossible to install and maintain them there, like Lily, Prince of Persia, Need for Speed etc. They use almost 1gb each…
Hipstamatch almost use 1gb too… They could review these issues…

shashinka

I think the bigger issue is still that the program is getting bloated. Some like myself have every add-on installed.

To make matters worse is the fact that there is no cache file queue reset. As in my case, I may have not a single image on any camera roll, or saved to the Hipstamatic "print" gallery within the program itself, nor any family albums or stacks, yet the program has 5GB of my storage space on my iPhone held hostage due to "associated files"

This is an issue that has been made to the Hipstamatic programming team, but does not seem like a big deal to worry about. It sucks for those who have either an 8GB or 16GB model of the iPhone to have between a third and a half of the memory of their iPhones taken hostage.

http://zerozero31.tumblr.com zerozero31

… it’s also an incredibly unstable release. Crashes, freezes and slows down continuously.

Kaphinga

@jovike and shashinka — Some of the earlier versions of Hipstamatic had some problems with garbage collection and would not release the storage space for an image, even after you deleted the image from your gallery and camera roll. Over time, Hipstamatic would take over all the space on your phone. The newer releases handle storage space much better. Unfortunately, if you took a bunch of pictures with an older release of Hipstamatic, your only solution is to delete the app, reinstall it, and then restore your purchases. You will have to recreate your favorites and shake-to-randomize choices from scratch.

Incidentally, Photoforge2 and several other apps have the same issue. Photoforge saves every layer of every version of every image, even if you delete it from your Photoforge gallery. It's a good idea to periodically check how much space each app is using, and then delete and reinstall the space hogs.

Nicci

All it does is crash now. Hope they fix it soon because it was my favorite app. I have all the lenses and I can’t use the app at all anymore.

About Life In LoFi

Life In LoFi is one of the oldest and most-respected blogs about iPhoneography (iPhone photography) and capturing the world in digital lo-fi. Featuring iPhone photo news, showcases, app reviews, and the occasional musings of iPhoneographer Marty Yawnick.
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